Short Classics

Leo Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists for such works as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He also wrote a number of outstanding short stories. This is one of his best.

Welcome to Bald's farm. Well, perhaps it's not Bald's farm anymore. The old man has kicked the bucket, setting off a wave of conflict from the flooded farmhouse kitchen to the muddy pig pen to the tall wheat fields. In this darkly funny, slightly supernatural chain of tales, no creature is safe. Not Leonard Grey, a spider with sophisticated tastes. Not Esmeralda, a resentful one-legged pig. Not Tulip, a plant with a mean streak.

This wide-ranging collection comprises the following six short stories by Joseph Conrad: Youth: A Narrative (1902); Karain: A Memory (1898); An Outpost of Progress (1898); The Lagoon (1898); Amy Foster (1909); The Anarchist - A Desperate Tale (1903). 'Youth: A Narrative' is an epic tale of a perilous voyage under sail to Bangkok, with a cargo of coal, narrated by Charles Marlow.

First published in an 1839 edition of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is the story of the declining physical and psychological health of the residents of the House of Usher - and the way in which the house itself reflects that. Gothic in theme and style, the story is an exemplar of Poe's philosophy of composition, which dictates that literary works should be short and methodological and have a unity of effect wherein all the elements of the story are related and relevant.

Here are 11 short stories and one novella by Anton Chekhov, one of the finest masters of what is acknowledged as a difficult genre. There is the richly comic "Oh! The Public" about a hassled ticket inspector, a wry look at morals and manners in "The Chorus Girl", and the melancholic tale of a cab driver in "Misery".

From a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them. A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well as society's expectations of him. A missionary brutally converted to the worship of a tribal fetish is left with but an echo of his identity. Whether set in North Africa, Paris, or Brazil, the stories in Exile and the Kingdom are probing portraits of spiritual exile, and man's perpetual search for an inner kingdom.

English literature may very well be the greatest body of imaginative writing the world has yet seen. The human experience has been understood, interpreted, and conveyed by writers of genius in a tradition stretching through six or more centuries, from Chaucer to Philip Larking, from Defoe to William Golding.

Qui est cet inconnu capable d'en remontrer au grand Czentovic, le champion mondial des échecs, véritable prodige aussi fruste qu'antipathique ? Peut-on croire, comme il l'affirme, qu'il n'a pas joué depuis plus de vingt ans ? Les circonstances dans lesquelles l'homme a acquis sa science du jeu sont terribles. Elles renvoient aux expérimentations nazies sur les effets de l'isolement absolu, lorsque, aux frontières de la folie, le cerveau humain parvient à déployer ses facultés les plus étranges.

From best-selling authors Ilona Andrews, Yasmine Galenorn, Allyson James, and Jeanne C. Stein comes an anthology of four all-new novellas featuring powerful women who know how to handle a hex or two. In "Double Hexed" from Allyson James, a novella of the Stormwalker series, Janet and her friends find themselves locked in her hotel, victims of a hex cast by a very powerful sorcerer.

The first American book on personal finance, "The Way to Wealth" by Benjamin Franklin is still the best and wisest money book ever written. Originally published in 1758 as the preface to "Poor Richard's Almanack", this little gem has been through innumerable printings and sold millions of copies to those in search of smart but entertaining advice about hard work, earning and saving money and debt.

Gertrude Stein’s pioneering triptych Three Lives portrays the lives of three working-class women in the fictional American town of Bridgepoint (Baltimore). A progenitor of the "stream of consciousness" technique later adopted by Joyce and Woolf, Stein takes us into the minds of three distinct women, who are each trapped in their societal positions. "The Good Anna" follows a stern but kind German immigrant, "Melanctha" the tragic life of an African-American woman of the same name, and "The Gentle Lena" a dreamy and unopinionated servant whose passiveness becomes her undoing.

Just So Stories is a collection of contemporary children's stories by Rudyard Kipling. Many of the stories are fictitious explanations for natural occurrences, including the stories How the Whale Got His Throat and How the Camel Got His Hump. These stories will keep children entertained for hours.

This inspiring anthology collects enduring and entertaining stories that have enthralled young and old, by the cherished authors whose tales have captivated children for generations. Perfect for the family car trip or at-home listening, these recordings sparkle with the wit and wonder of time-tested storytelling.

Young, impressionable Aubrey is fascinated by the enigmatic Lord Ruthven, and accompanies him on a tour to Europe. But Aubrey develops a growing distaste for Lord Ruthven’s sinister and grotesque conduct - especially as it concerns human blood. This novella, penned during that tempestuous night in Switzerland amongst such notables as Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley, served as the great inspiration for Bram Stoker to create Dracula.

Nikolay is tired of his dull life working at a railway station and his loveless marriage. When he accidentally breaks a champagne bottle on New Year’ s Eve, his wife is convinced that it is an omen of bad luck to come. Nikolay, already dissatisfied with his life, thinks his wife is overreacting. His feels that not much more could go wrong in his life. Then, in the brink of his despair, a young and beautiful visitor, his wife’s aunt, arrives unexpectedly.

"Crooken Sands" is a short fantasy/horror tale by the author of Dracula. The story follows a London merchant on a mysterious adventure in Scotland.

Is the ‘perfect murder’ possible? Can that crime be committed with such consummate care, with such exacting skill, that it is unsolvable—even to the most astute investigator? In this unique collection, legendary crime writers Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Ronald Knox, Dorothy L. Sayers and Russell Thorndike each attempt to create the unsolvable murder, which Superintendent Cornish of the CID then attempts to unravel.

In Difficult Loves, Italy's master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love-including self-love-are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady's bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each of them discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.

A Distant Episode contains the best of Paul Bowles's short stories, as selected by the author. An American cult figure, Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Jay McInerney.

A thriller writer is embroiled in a real-life whodunit when a friend drops dead with her hatpin impaled in his back. The violation of a sealed West Bank tomb, its rock walls intact, provides a Thebes investigator with a mystifying conundrum. Two sisters take shelter in a shuttered old house at the end of a country road . . . only to discover they're not alone. And the author's most beloved characters, Amelia Peabody and Radcliff Emerson, make an appearance in a newly uncovered tale with a witty nod to Sherlock Holmes.